Tide Will Help You Hide the Truth of Your Secret Double Life!

A TV commercial is currently airing, for Tide laundry detergent, which makes me feel kinda… creepy. And I wonder if I’m the only one it affects this way?

It shows a woman in her forties (probably around my age), sitting in a living room reading, or nursing a wicked hangover, or whatever. A teenage girl enters, and says, “Mom, did you borrow my green shirt?” And the mother looks up from her copy of ‘Herpes Is Forever’ (I’m guessing), before a series of flashbacks is triggered.

In it, the woman is shown cavorting with two other hard-partying harlots, dancing and clubbing it up and engaging in much purposeful walking. And their confident strides say, “We’re here, we mean business, and we’ve been enjoying empty, drunken sex with strangers since Reagan’s first term, possibly Carter… who can possibly know at this point?”

The woman, of course, is wearing her daughter’s green shirt, and is finally shown slopping food all over it.

It’s a very quick shot: the last flashback scene. But it appears the women are walking through a darkened alley somewhere, probably having just finished up with their dates, and the girl’s mother is eating what might be a fistful of goulash. I don’t really understand that part of it. Perhaps she’s so intoxicated she doesn’t realize there is no bowl or utensils in use? And where did she get it, anyway? Where does a person buy loose goulash in the alleyway of a large city? It’s confusing. In any case, the woman dumps a great load of the stuff down the front of herself.

The flashback ends, and we’re back in the living room with the teenager, who has just asked her mother a question about the whereabouts of her green shirt. And she answers, “It’s not really my style, honey.” Which is very close to a lie… At best, it’s a politician’s answer that seems to mean something specific (that she hasn’t seen the shirt), but actually has a large amount of wiggle-room built into it.

The girl mumbles, “Weird. I can’t find it,” turns, and leaves. And the mother is shown racing up the stairs, and frantically pawing through a clothes hamper. She starts flinging dirty underwear onto the floor, and eventually locates the horribly stained garment, mashed and wrinkled near the bottom. Apparently she’d forgotten all about it — possibly about the entire evening — and it looked like the shirt might now be wet. Maybe she’d come home in a drunken stupor, on a subsequent evening, got confused and evacuated her bladder into the hamper? It’s an unknown.

Then she takes the shirt to the laundry room, and starts tending to the many stains she collected during her wild, wasted escapade downtown. Luckily, the shirt is green so it’s likely that the grass stains on the back aren’t all that obvious. And the new goulash-busting Tide detergent took care of the rest.

The final scene shows the daughter walking through the living room in the ugly green shirt, and the mother says, “Oh, I see you found it?” And the girl answers, “Yeah, I guess it was hiding in my closet!”

Oh, and if that poor child only knew the truth… it would destroy her. The deception, the sexual addiction, the discotheques, the endless parade of men who favor cologne and gold bracelets… It’s like an episode of Law & Order SVU boiled down to thirty seconds!

Or is it possible that I’m reading too much into a detergent commercial? You be the judge.

As for a Question, please use the comments section to tell us about other current commercials that are shocking and disgraceful. I saw one about Gushers the other day that was, well… I don’t even want to get into it. What horrible, horrible things have you seen depicted and insinuated in TV commercials? Tell us about it, won’t you?

Also, what other outrageous stuff is hinted-at in that Tide commercial? What did I miss? It’s up to us to keep society on the straight and narrow!

How about that commercial for some godawful minivan that starts with some kid at school and we hear the voice of another kid saying ” Hey Parker, Wanna race ? Bet I can beat you home !”
The kid runs home & throws himself into the minivan hatchback. The self-closing back door and back-up camera are shown off as selling points, but I can never get past the point that the commercial was obviously originally written about the first kid getting CHASED home. The re-dubbing and editing are ridiculous ! The only thing more ridiculous is the idea that some ad agency sold the concept that a kid being chased home by bullies is a good thing to base a car commercial around.

So…I’m just going to send off all the spare gold trinkets I have lying around here to some place in Lotsaluck, Wisconsin. I’m sure everything will be just fine. Maybe I’ll include my bank card and PIN number too and that way they can deposit my money directly into my account.

I’m just wondering after reading this thread and thinking about commercials I’ve endured (there’s a reason I *love* DVR. It’s called a fast-forward button): are commercials generally written by really dumb twelve-year-olds or do ad people think that’s their target audience?

I gave up listening to radio in large part because commercials annoy me so much and DVR TV shows so I can skip the ads (also saves me anywhere up to 25% of the show’s alleged running time).

There is a disturbing trend that I’ve noticed lately. Commercials slipped into the script of the show. I’ve seen them on Bones where Angela is explaining to another character about how convenient it is for her to carry her art in her minivan. She goes on to extol more features of the car and mentions the name Toyota. I just felt kind of cheated. Maybe it’s because of the DVR. You can’t fast forward a commercial that’s stuck right into the show.

My parents are coming to visit me in college so we’re going to Olive Garden but my whore roommate is going to invite herself along since she thinks she’s part of the family since she blew my little brother during sibs weekend.

Or these “I have a structured settlement and I need cash now!” commercials. Basically you are too stupid to budget for the money that you know you will get because you slipped on some cum at wal-mart and need a lump sum payment for the waverunner trailer you saw on craigslist.

Or, I need a lump sum for the SS checks I stole from the lady down the street. Once I finish my woman suit I’ll be rich.